Cold War
|- sizcache="519" sizset="192" style="background: #f0f0f0; vertical-align: middle; spacing-top: 0px; spacing-bottom: 0px" | colspan="2" sizcache="519" sizset="192" style="border-bottom: #999999 1px solid; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px"| |- sizcache="519" sizset="196" style="background: #f0f0f0; vertical-align: middle; spacing-top: 0px; spacing-bottom: 0px" | colspan="2" sizcache="519" sizset="196" style="border-bottom: #999999 1px solid; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px"| |- style="text-align: center; background: #7995ca; color: #ffffff; font-size: larger" ! colspan="2"|Cold War |- sizcache="519" sizset="197" style="text-align: center" | colspan="2" sizcache="519" sizset="197" style="padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; background: #b4c5e3; padding-top: 0px"| Clockwise from top-left: An Mi-24 Hind in Laos; Hueys target Viet Cong campsite; an F-4 Phantom bombing Huế, South Vietnam; Soviet guards stand watch at the Baikonur Cosmodrome; an SR-71 Blackbird providing recon for Kilo One. |- style="background: #f0f0f0; vertical-align: middle; spacing-top: 0px; spacing-bottom: 0px" | colspan="2" style="border-bottom: #999999 1px solid; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border-top: #999999 1px solid; padding-top: 0px"| |- style="background: #f0f0f0; vertical-align: middle; spacing-top: 0px; spacing-bottom: 0px" | colspan="2" style="border-bottom: #999999 1px solid; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border-top: #999999 1px solid; padding-top: 0px"| |- style="background: #f0f0f0; vertical-align: middle; spacing-top: 0px; spacing-bottom: 0px" | colspan="2" style="border-bottom: #999999 1px solid; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border-top: #999999 1px solid; padding-top: 0px"| |- sizcache="535" sizset="184" style="background: #f0f0f0; vertical-align: middle; spacing-top: 0px; spacing-bottom: 0px" | colspan="2" sizcache="535" sizset="184" style="border-bottom: #999999 1px solid; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; border-top: #999999 1px solid; padding-top: 0px"| |- ! colspan="2" style="text-align: left; background: #b4c5e3; font-weight: normal"|Combatants |- sizcache="535" sizset="187" style="background: #f0f0f0; vertical-align: top; spacing-top: 0px; spacing-bottom: 0px" | class="infoboxcell" sizcache="535" sizset="187" style="border-bottom: #999999 1px solid; border-top: #999999 1px solid; border-right: #999999 1px solid" width="50%"| North Atlantic Treaty Organization United States United Kingdom West Germany Italy ---- Co-belligerents: South Korea Cuban exiles South Vietnam and other Non-NATO supporters *Many anti-Communist guerrillas | class="infoboxcell" sizcache="535" sizset="188" style="border-bottom: #999999 1px solid; border-top: #999999 1px solid" width="50%"| Warsaw Pact Soviet Union East Germany People's Republic of Poland People's Republic of China ---- Co-belligerents: North Korea Cuba North Vietnam Viet Cong Pathet Lao Communist Cambodia and other Soviet supporters *Many Communist guerrillas |- ! colspan="2" style="text-align: left; background: #b4c5e3; font-weight: normal"|Commanders |- sizcache="535" sizset="189" style="background: #f0f0f0; vertical-align: top; spacing-top: 0px; spacing-bottom: 0px" | class="infoboxcell" sizcache="535" sizset="189" style="border-bottom: #999999 1px solid; border-top: #999 1px solid; border-right: #999999 1px solid" width="50%"| Dwight D. Esienhower John F. Kennedy† Richard Nixon *Other US Presidents Robert McNamara *Other US SecDefs Unknown General CIA operatives: Jason Hudson Grigori Weaver Alex Mason Frank Woods† Joseph Bowman† Cuban rebels: Carlos | class="infoboxcell" sizcache="535" sizset="191" style="border-bottom: #999999 1px solid; border-top: #999999 1px solid" width="50%"| Joseph Stalin Nikita Khrushchev Leonid Brezhnev *Other Soviet leaders Nikita Dragovich† Lev Kravchenko† Friedrich Steiner† ---- Fidel Castro Ho Chi Minh VC Bookie† |- ! colspan="2" style="text-align: left; background: #b4c5e3; font-weight: normal"|Strength |- sizcache="537" sizset="193" style="background: #f0f0f0; vertical-align: top; spacing-top: 0px; spacing-bottom: 0px" | class="infoboxcell" sizcache="537" sizset="193" style="border-bottom: #999999 1px solid; border-top: #999999 1px solid; border-right: #999999 1px solid" width="50%"| U.S. Armed Forces ' US Army * 1st Cavalry Division *US Marine Corps US Navy *Navy SEALs US Air Force CIA SOG '''UK Armed Forces ' British Army *SAS *Commandos '''Cuban rebels | class="infoboxcell" sizcache="537" sizset="204" style="border-bottom: #999999 1px solid; border-top: #999999 1px solid" width="50%"| Soviet Armed Forces ' Soviet Army *Spetsnaz Red Army Soviet Air Forces Soviet Navy Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces Soviet Air Defense Forces '''Cuban Armed Forces ' *Tropas *Cuban Police 'North Vietnam Armed Forces ' North Vietnamese Army Viet Cong other combatants |- ! colspan="2" style="text-align: left; background: #b4c5e3; font-weight: normal"|Casualties |- style="background: #f0f0f0; vertical-align: top; spacing-top: 0px; spacing-bottom: 0px" | class="infoboxcell" style="border-bottom: #999999 1px solid; border-top: #999999 1px solid; border-right: #999999 1px solid" width="50%"| Unknown | class="infoboxcell" style="border-bottom: #999999 1px solid; border-top: #999999 1px solid" width="33%"| Unknown |} The '''Cold War (Russian: холо́дная война́, kholodnaya voĭna) was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States and its allies. Although the chief military forces never engaged in a major battle with each other, they expressed the conflict through military coalitions, strategic conventional force deployments, extensive aid to states deemed vulnerable, proxy wars, espionage, propaganda, conventional and nuclear arms races, appeals to neutral nations, rivalry at sports events, and technological competitions such as the Space Race. After the success of their temporary wartime alliance against Nazi Germany, the USSR and the US saw each other as profound enemies due to their economic and political differences. The Soviet Union created the Eastern Bloc with the eastern European countries it occupied, annexing part or all of some and maintaining others as satellite states. The post-war recovery of Western Europe was facilitated by the United States' Marshall Plan, while the Soviet Union, wary of the conditions attached, declined to participate and prompted its satellite states to do likewise. An alternative, COMECON, was set up by the Soviets instead. The United States forged North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a military alliance using containment of communism as a main strategy (Truman Doctrine), in 1949, while the Soviet bloc formed the Warsaw Pact in 1955. Some countries aligned with NATO and the Warsaw Pact, and others chose to stay neutral with the Non-Aligned Movement. Elsewhere, the US and USSR fought proxy wars of various types: in Latin America and Southeast Asia, the USSR assisted and helped foster communist revolutions, opposed by several Western countries and their regional allies; some they attempted to roll back, with mixed results. The Cold War featured cycles of relative calm and of high tension. The most tense involved the Berlin Blockade (1948–1949), the Korean War (1950–1953), the Berlin Crisis of 1961, the Vietnam War (1959–1975), the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), the Soviet war in Afghanistan (1979–1989), and the Able Archer 83 NATO exercises in November 1983. Both sides sought détente to relieve political tensions and deter direct military attack, which would probably guarantee their mutual assured destruction with nuclear weapons. In the 1980s, under the Reagan Doctrine, the United States increased diplomatic, military, and economic pressures on the Soviet Union, at a time when the nation was already suffering economic stagnation. In the late 1980s, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev introduced the liberalizing reforms of perestroika ("reconstruction", "reorganization", 1987) and glasnost ("openness", ca. 1985). The Cold War ended after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, leaving the United States as the dominant military power. The Cold War and its events have had a significant impact on the world today, and it is often referred to in popular culture, especially in media featuring themes of espoinage and the threat of nuclear warfare. But four years later in 1995, the Soviet Union was re-created and started a new global conflict that is ongoing to this present-day, Cold War II or New Cold War. Orgins of the term